Us and them …

Another day.  Another example of government employees running amuck.

It’s becoming all too common. Government employees get caught doing something that would get them fired immediately in just about any other job.  In some cases, they would also likely face criminal prosecution for their actions.   

Yet they don’t get fired. Nor do they face any serious punishment, much less prosecution. 

It makes no difference whether it’s at the IRS, the DEA, the EPA or other Federal agencies and departments, or with out-of-control employees or officials at the state level. Employees are generally protected, no matter what they’ve done. Their managers plead ignorance, claim they have no power to act, or simply choose to resign on a fat government pension.  

DEA agents were found to have attended sex parties with prostitutes for many years, funded by the same drug cartels they are supposed to go after. Their boss at the DEA – since 2007 – claimed she had little power to discipline the agents and supervisors involved. 

For cavorting with hookers paid for by local drug cartels, the agents and supervisors were only suspended without pay for between two and 10 days. The boss also resigned.

The Secret Service – tasked with protecting the President, among other things – in the past year has so far allowed an armed felon to ride the elevator with Obama in the White House.  It also couldn’t stop a knife-wielding man who jumped the fence and evaded a sniper, dogs, agents and alarmed doors to penetrate deep into the White House before being caught.  Most recently, a man was able to land a self-built gyrocopter on the White House lawn. 

I can’t find if anyone was disciplined for all these security lapses, which their boss generally blamed on budget cuts in staffing and training programs.

That was a similar justification from the head of the IRS before a Congressional committee this month. He was being grilled on why millions of taxpayers couldn’t get the help they needed this tax season and why phone wait times had ballooned. He blamed cuts in the IRS funding and the need to divert remaining resources to support IRS activities related to ObamaCare.

Meanwhile, he admitted that the IRS had still given out millions in bonuses to IRS employees – including those who owed back taxes themselves, as well as to others such as Lois Lerner who had to resign in the targeting scandal. (Lerner got a bonus of about $129k.) Then there was the $23 million the IRS spent on funding internal government employee union activities, too. 

The interesting part was that the IRS commissioner didn’t think the bonuses or the union funding was a big deal. He couldn’t understand why prioritizing bonuses and union activities over customer service to taxpayers was upsetting anyone.  Seriously.     

We should not be surprised.  I know I wasn’t. 

Our government increasingly exists to protect government employees and grow the number of people wholly dependent on government. It serves itself first. It serves constituencies dependent on government money next.  And it serves the rest of us with whatever remains. 

That’s not how our government was supposed to work. It was never intended to be like this. Working for the government was once called “public service” for a reason. No one ever expected to find the government in an adversarial relationship with the public it is supposed to serve. 

But that’s what we have today.  The government vs. the general public. 

Way too many government employees have contempt for the public. They revel in their power to force ordinary citizens to do their bidding, either by bludgeoning them with regulations or punishing them with special fees and taxes.  People otherwise not qualified enough to run a lemonade stand get great pleasure telling real businesses how they need to operate, what they should pay their employees, and how many hours they should work.  Government workers who owe thousands in back taxes enjoy prosecuting regular taxpayers who make innocent filing errors. 

And no one does anything about it.

It’s not that there aren’t entities in government with the power to police government employees. There are.  But the sense of entitlement is so widespread – actually institutionalized – these entities simply won’t act.

It’s the ultimate “old boy / old girl” network where indiscretions and mistakes are routinely swept under the rug unless a political scapegoat is needed.  Even then, the punishment rarely is equal to the crime when government employees and appointees are involved. 

Think of it this way:  If you or I don’t pay our taxes we face penalties and possible seizure of our assets, if not jail.  But if you’re an IRS employee and don’t pay your taxes, you not only don’t get punished, you could still get a bonus. 

That’s how out of whack it is.   

Look, I am no anarchist.  A civilized society needs a central government to provide for the common defense, regulate trade, enforce laws, build infrastructure that benefits the nation as a whole, and provide a safe environment for everyone within its borders, among other things.   

Our government should serve us, not itself. That’s what our Constitution and Bill Of Rights are fundamentally all about.    

When the government serves itself at the expense of its people, that’s called totalitarianism.     

We never signed up for that.